


It's Just to Good to be True

by TallerMahler



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:52:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8008837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TallerMahler/pseuds/TallerMahler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk has never been in love with him, of that Leonard is 100% sure. So it seems only right to expedite the end of their... whatever this is before Jim gets tired of him and and he's even more up the figurative shit's creek in love with him. </p>
<p>(Or the one where Leonard needs to get his head out of his own ass.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Just to Good to be True

**Author's Note:**

> So this is from this tumblr post (http://stpressure.tumblr.com/post/100904507205/doctorenterprise-but-what-if-jim-and-bones) and it's not exactly to the prompt but it's inspired by it. I hope if the OP sees it they like it.

Jim Kirk will be the death of him. 

Unsurprisingly, this is far from the first time Leonard has thought this particular gem. Even more unsurprising is the frequency the thought enters his mind during this particular activity. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jim groans from beneath him, shivering and shirtless in one of the hospital’s patient rooms. 

“It’s like you’re trying to die,” Leonard says. His fingers run over the mottled skin, tracing the flow of developing blues and purples that emerge. Jim’s broken another rib or two and the way he’s breathing doesn’t settle well in Leonard’s chest. They’re waiting on the portable scanner at the moment though, and there’s not much he can do besides worry and offer whatever comfort he’s able. 

Jim’s pallor has become ghostly white and a thin sheen of sweat is spotted across his forehead, so Leonard wipes it off as gently as possible with the end of his jacket sleeve. Jim, for all his posturing, leans into his touch. 

“It was a training exercise,” Jim mutters, eyes closed against the pain of loose rib bones pressing in on his lungs. “It’s no one’s fault – ”

“Hendorff threw you off a platform – ”

“Cupcake didn’t know there was a drop! Hell, I didn’t know there was a drop – ”

“You fell fifteen feet!”

“Really, Bones?” Jim says tiredly. “Did I?”

Leonard exhales through his nose. It’s long suffering and familiar the way his breath leaves him. 

“Let’s talk about this later,” he says, resigned and knowing full well they won’t talk so much as squabble. “In the mean time, let’s get you lying down.”

“Oh Bones,” Jim tries to purr, though it turns into more of a pained grunt as Leonard gently maneuvers him onto his back. “In the office? I had no idea you were so kinky.”

“Broken bones have never been much of a turn on for me.” 

Leonard pauses, realizing Jim’s still half dressed in his cadet reds. He’d exhausted himself trying to pull his arm out of the jacket earlier and now looks utterly miserable with the fabric bunching around his neck. Leonard turns to the drawers behind him and pulls out a pair of large scissors and begins cutting the material away from Jim’s prone form. When he looks down, Jim seems half ready to pass out. His chest has all but stopped moving, instead quivering as he tries not to breathe.

“Hey, darlin’,” he whispers, watching as one bright blue eye creaks open to look back at him. “It’ll all be okay, but you gotta remember to breathe.”

Jim grins at him and grunts a small affirmation. An even smaller inhalation follows. 

The two of them settle into silence while Leonard finishes cutting the last of Jim’s jacket from his shoulders. It’s the fourth one he’s destroyed this semester alone, maybe a record amongst Starfleet.

“You know,” Leonard says once he’s finished pulling and tugging the jacket away from under Jim. “I might not find pain sexy, but the silence I could get used to.”

He hears Jim gurgle something that might’ve been meant as a laugh as he tosses the ruined jacket into the recycler. Leonard debates whether or not he should hold Jim’s hand, if that wouldn’t be coddling him too much like an actual partner might, when a knock on the door signals the arrival of the scanner and osteoregen. 

All in all getting Jim’s ribs set, knitted, and wrapped. The whole thing takes all of three hours (one for each rib) with less whining than Leonard had originally expected and fewer wise cracks to boot, which was disconcerting until he realized Jim had fallen asleep to the lull of the quiet murmur that the machines created. 

He looked ridiculous with his mouth hanging open and drool literally pouring down his right cheek, and yet Leonard was still fucked to the n-th degree. He was in love with the drooling infant who broke three ribs falling off a man made cliff during a routine sparring practice. 

Jim let out a loud snort, one that gurgled in the back of his throat, and all it did was make Leonard think, _this is the idiot that I love_. 

Which, fuck. 

_Fuck_. 

He loves James I-will-drive-you-to-an-early-grave Kirk. 

_Fuck_. 

Leonard begins packing up the scanner around 21:40 before he calls for someone to bring Jim a Fleet sweatshirt and to put the osteoregen back in its place. His shift ended an hour ago, but it didn’t seem right to leave Jim asleep and alone in the hospital when he could just as easily wait. The mess was about to close, but he figures they can pick up something from that cheap Andorian run ramen place off campus. 

Leonard gently rubs Jim’s shoulder, hoping he doesn’t catch a flying right hook for his trouble. Waking Jim Kirk is about as dangerous and equally unpredictable as treating a sedated Gorn – you never see the punch coming. 

“Jim,” he tries. “You’ve got to get up now. I don’t want to spend the rest of my night off in sickbay just because you can’t get your lazy ass off this cot.”

“Mmm.” Jim rolls over onto his side. “An’thng. Plss, Sam.”

Leonard pauses. Well, he more freezes like he’d been dropped onto Rura Penthe in his skivvies. 

_Sam_. Right. 

It’s not like Leonard isn’t wholly aware of the parameters that define his and Jim’s relationship. They have an arrangement – bicker, eat together, share their quarters, and (since the second week at the academy) fool around whenever the need strikes, but that is as far as it went. It shouldn’t surprise him that Jim has other people in his life. Men, women, third and tertiary gendered beings, and everyone in between seems to be drawn to Jim like he’s a beacon. ‘Moths to a light’ is what he’s often thought. It’s simply unavoidable. 

Still, he hasn’t heard Jim talk about anyone else in a long time, nearly a year of silence on the romantic airwaves, and he’d thought… 

He doesn’t know what he thought; something fool-hearted and stupidly romantic, surely. It’s almost like he’s come straight out of a trashy Orion romance movie. 

He suddenly doesn’t think he can stomach food, let alone shitty 5-credit ramen. 

“ _Jim_ ,” he says more forcefully, momentarily forgetting why, exactly, it’s a bad idea to shout at this idiot. “It’s time to get up, you infant.”

He gets a violent snort in response for his troubles. Jim jerks sideways and clips Leonard hard on the left ear just before he tumbles off of the biobed. 

“God _damn_ it!” Leonard grasps his now throbbing head and shuts his left eye to try and block out the pain. “Christ _alive_ , that hurts!”

“Fuck, fuck, Bones. I’m so sorry,” he can hear from beside him. Leonard can all but hear Jim’s hands hover above him for the short second it takes Jim to decide to touch him. He knows the kid well enough though, and he manages to duck out of the way before he can latch onto his med-jacket. 

“It’s fine – It’s _fine_ , Jim,” he says over Jim’s repeated apologies. “I’m fine. It’s nothing I can’t fix with the regen back in the dorm.”

(He was pretty sure he could fix it. Jim did have one hell of a right hook, especially if it was a sucker punch. Maybe he could have Chapel look at him on the way out.)

He gives Jim a cursory once over. “Are you alright? Didn’t undo any of the work I just put in?”

Jim just shakes his head and mumbles softly at him. “You’re bleeding.” 

Leonard sighs. 

(So, Chapel first.)

“I’m fine.” Leonard swipes a hand through where the blood is most likely coming. It’s just a little cut from what he can tell. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“Bones – ”

“I need Chapel to look at this before I leave. You go back to the room and rest.”

Leonard should be the mature one in this relationship, he should be nice to the kid who just broke three ribs, but he is foolishly lovesick, idiotically heartbroken, and bleeding from a head injury given to him (albeit accidentally) by the man who is the source of both of those things in the first place. He’ll apologize later when he’s feeling less pig-headed. 

In the mean time, he’s determined to ignore everything until he’s lying face first in his bed with half a bottle of rye whiskey in his belly, dinner and doctor’s orders be damned. 

He rips the door open halfway through Jim’s thousandth apology. 

“Chapel!”

“Yes, Leonard?” says an unimpressed voice from behind him. 

“It’s Doctor.”

“When you’re on shift, yes.” Somehow that woman manages to make a straight stare look like an eye roll. “Right now, however, you are my fellow cadet and I will address you as such.”

Leonard bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. He isn’t in the mood for niceties or pleasantries or any other kind of human interaction for the foreseeable future. Instead, he turns his head so she can see his ear, and gets a confused eyebrow in return. 

“Would you fix this for me please, Christine?”

“Oh jeeze,” she says, stepping out from behind the Nurse’s Station. “Of course, Leonard. Come here.”

Leonard plops himself into one of their uncomfortable chairs. It makes a harsh groan under his weight, which means either they need new seats in the hospital or he needs to loose a few pounds and he really doesn’t want to think about either. Instead, he closes his eyes as Chapel fires up the regen unit and begins sealing the skin around his ear. 

“Your boyfriend is hovering.”

“Don’t call him that,” Leonard answers. 

He can almost hear Chapel smile. “I think it’s cute.”

“We’re both too old to be called anyone’s damned boyfriend.”

“Still.” The regen shuts off with a soft click and Chapel wipes the side of his face with a sanitary cloth to remove the blood. “I think it’s sweet. He follows you around like a lost puppy.”

Leonard raises an eyebrow at that, stretching the newly knitted skin a little too soon. It pulls awkwardly at his cheek. “You have _met_ Jim Kirk, right?”

Chapel simply shrugs and places the regen back in its carry box. “He looks pretty lost to me.”

She nods her head to where Jim is currently standing in the hallway looking… well, looking lost. His hands are tucked into the borrowed sweatshirt and his head is somewhat bowed, staring straight at his boots. Every once and a while, when someone passes him, he’ll straighten his back and give a grin with a mouth that butter wouldn’t melt in, but there’s something strangely forced about the whole thing.

It makes Leonard’s chest hurt, just a little. 

Jim must sense him staring because the kid finally looks in his direction and raises his arm. Leonard can see a wince Jim’s not quick enough to hide, which means the fool did go and bruise his ribs again when he fell of the bed. Leonard’ll have to go over him again with a tricorder when they get back to the room. He’ll wait until Jim’s sleeping. It’s not like he’ll get it done before if Jim’s so vocally adamant about being fine right now. 

Leonard pushes himself from the chair and meets him in the hallway. 

Jim’s got a shit-eating grin on his face as he offers him his elbow, as though Leonard is his prom date. 

“Ready, Bones?”

Leonard grunts something unflattering about Jim’s intelligence and tries to push the arm out of the way, but Jim simply catches him by the sleeve and holds onto him as they walk out of the hospital doors. Leonard has the insane desire to hold his hand, just this once, in public. Instead, he simply lets himself be tugged along to the cheap ramen place he’d thought of before, almost as though Jim had read his mind. 

_Sam_ , he thinks as Jim grins at him over a suspect bowl of noodles. 

He wonders how long he’ll have this, sometimes. He wonders when Jim will get bored with him a fair bit more than that. 

Jim continues talking, oblivious to the maelstrom inside Leonard’s head. The kid is just too damn beautiful. He’s smarter than most of the cadets put together, can smile and light up a room in ways that no other person has ever been able to, not even Jocelyn when Leonard was head over ass in love with her. He’s strong and charming, kind in ways that aren’t always apparent. A grade A self sacrificing idiot and Leonard loves him. 

They’ve moved on to the thermodynamics of a hyperspace warp 7 jump, something that is going to be on Jim’s flight exam, when an Orion male in Command Yellow walks past their table and does a double take. 

“Jimmy?” 

“Hmm?” A smile spreads across Jim’s face like daybreak. “Saiph!”

Jim stands and is pulled into a firm embrace. The Orion – Saiph, apparently – runs his long green fingers into Jim’s hair and gives it a tug. 

“It’s been so long,” Saiph coos. He’s looking at Jim like he’s already planning the rest of their evening. His eyes trail down Jim’s face to his lips and he licks his own in kind. 

Jim puts his palm against Saiph’s cheek, cupping it as he stops the fingers from messing up his already elegantly messy hair. 

“I thought you were in deep space, Lieutenant.”

“We’re back for supplies and Captain E’ttring is giving a guest lecture on dilithium mining.” He wraps his hand around Jim’s waist and Leonard mentally reviews his Orion biology. He watches silently as Jim tugs the hands off of his waist and entangles their fingers together in the way Leonard had wanted to earlier in the quad. 

“I’ll have to check it out.”

“And who’s this?” Saiph trails his eyes over to Leonard, finally picking up that they weren’t alone, let alone still standing in public. 

“Oh!” Jim glances over the table at him, as though he had forgotten he was there. “This is Leonard McCoy. Cadet, doctor, and all around grump.”

“My goodness, Jimmy. He’s gorgeous.” Saiph moves to brush his fingers down Leonard’s cheek, but he ducks out of the way to offer his hand instead. 

“Pleasure, lieutenant.”

“Ah.” Some understanding falls into Saiph’s eyes and his grip firms in Leonard’s hand. “Nice to meet you, doctor.”

“So,” Leonard says, forcing a change to the subject. “How are you enjoying it out there in that tin can?”

“Tin can?” 

“Bones here doesn’t exactly like the idea of space travel,” Jim says. 

“You do know Starfleet operates in space? Do you not?”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Jim tries to wave one of his hands, only to realize it’s still grasping one of Saiph’s. 

Leonard frowns at more than just a repeated insult to his intelligence. “I’m not ignorant of the situation, no.”

Jim smiles that infuriating smile, the one that means he’s gearing up to embarrass not only himself but Leonard besides, and he procures a chair to offer to Saiph. 

“I see you have forgotten about a little thing called ‘Flight 101’, Bones.” He nudges Saiph – still holding his godforsaken hand. “Let me refresh your memory.”

Which is how Leonard finds himself sitting at the same damned table two hours and four whiskeys later with half of his coordination and none of his dignity. He’d decided propriety could go fuck itself right about when Saiph had laughed a little too hard at one of the jokes and proceeded to lean in and nearly tongue fuck Jim’s ear. He’s at his wit’s end, just barely biting back all of the scathing remarks and threats to the Orion’s genitals – it’s one thing to know Jim has others on the side, it’s another thing completely to have to sit and make small talk with one of them. 

Saiph rubs the back of one of his hands across Jim’s cheek while the other does something below that table that makes Jim jump. Leonard celebrates this action by downing his half empty glass in one go. 

“I think it’s time for us to go,” he hears Jim saying from where he’s rested his head on the table. 

“You should come with me, Jimmy,” Saiph purrs. “I’m only here for a few days. We could have so much _fun_.”

“No,” Jim says, surprisingly firmly. “I have to get Bones back.”

“Ah, there’s the rub,” Leonard moans into the table. Of course Jim’s only turning down sex with a veritable alien sex god to get his drunk ass back to their dorm. He’ll probably go out again once Leonard’s passed out in his bed. 

The two of them ignore him as Jim bids Saiph farewell and suddenly there’s a hand in his hair, gently scratching his scalp. 

He indulges it in for a few moments (mostly because it feels so damned good) before he remembers he’s angry and that Jim is likely going to use that to do… _things_ with Saiph later. He shakes the hand off and sits up to rub at his face. It’s tacky from the grime on the table and only serves to make him angrier. 

When he looks up, Jim is looking at him softly. He’s sure it’s the whiskey, but Jim looks practically ethereal in yellow diner lighting. It makes his hair into a soft ring of… softness that frames his stupid, handsome face. 

“You’re not usually the one who gets shitfaced, Bones.” The hand makes its way back to his face and pulls gently on his earlobe, the one he’d hit earlier. It makes Leonard’s face burn and he turns his head again to dislodge those callous rough fingers. He doesn’t want to be touched so softly by Jim right now. 

It only makes Jim narrow his eyes in concern, which only makes him feel worse. 

“What’s going on with you?”

_I'm in love with you and you don’t love me back, that’s what’s fucking wrong_ , is what he wants to say. The words are on the tip of his increasingly numb tongue. 

“I can’t stand this anymore,” is what he says instead. “I think we should stop seeing each other.”

It takes half a second for the words to sink into both of their heads, after which all he can really think is:

_Well, fuck._


End file.
